Weaver Skeptical
beers and dragons and gamery
index ↑
Resolving with a d20 against a DC (Difficulty Class), AC (Armor Class), or TN (Target Number) is a bit flat. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is not iteration 108. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 107. …
" A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. The first blogger of the internet, named Justin Hall, a college undergrad, was found in 1994. That site was links.net and still active till the date. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. … "
When it appeared in the sky, we asked about it to our elders. They were as ignorant as us. We then went to ask the long-lived ones. You know how it goes with them. They travel from meadow to meadow, in style and in merriment, and there is no way to get a straight answer. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 106. …
The 2022 winter issue of Casus Belli is numbered 42. Casus Belli is the main French TTRPG magazine, it is the fourth iteration of this publication since the 1980s. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 105. …
Received my physical copy of In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard, issue 1 . …
Should I cast the spell and materialize the filter that blocks any #dungeon23 post? What would I miss? …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 104. …
The Tome of Adventure Design is an impressive volume, but there is something lacking. …
The community has this tradition, all the youngsters, as they reach sixteen years old, must go through the maze kept by the elders. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 103. …
The Dark Horse has released volume one of The Witcher Rōnin . Eastern European folklore is replaced with Japanese Yōkai and it blends nicely. …
It is a small book, small in size, it feels compact, you want to pocket it and take it on the streetcar or into the dungeon. It has thirteen essays, and the first one, the longest of them, hauled me on its back for a 31 pages one-breath ride. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 102. …
Detailing a semi-successful attempt to build a table to determine the outcome of a task assigned to a NPC. …
It's a small threat, an annoyance. It deals 1d4 damage, 1d6 for the bigger instances. One can literally not see where the hit comes from. Adventurers that know of the beast understand that it can only hit within 10 or 20 feet from its "contrivance". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 101. …
"I want to play a board game, it is easier to get into it". Or something like this. Someone was confessing to me they preferred board games over role-playing games. It was late, it was three past beer o'clock. …
I indulged in a few solo scenarii with Undaunted: Normandy . It describes itself as …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 100. …
This is a starting point for an adventure, a campaign maybe. The player characters are hostages. …
Casus Belli, is the main French TTRPG magazine. It started in 1980 and its current iteration is the fourth one. This publication is a reference point for me, it's now a bit "faded" in this world of blogs and micro-blogging, but it's not bad to have tracks with a slower tempo. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 99. …
Yet another extract from The Dawn of Everything . …
Simplifying attribute derivatives in my house rules, here are some intermediary notes to self. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 98. …
The orcs of the north have developed a combat formation that they call a "body". Unsurprisingly, it is composed of a "hand", a "back", and a "fist". Sometimes, there is a "belly" at the center of it. …
We had a great time playing Scythe . The game had been sitting on my shelf since, well, before the plague. Why such disuse? I had trouble finding players at that time, and then I forgot about it. Too bad, it is a great game. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 97. …
The post Boolean Advantage & Disadvantage got me thinking. …
I have never seen a map, at least I have never seen a map drawn on vellum, but my younger brother, the one who went to study and became a priest told me about them. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 96. …
" a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 95. …
Timers do end, and when they do, there's usually a bell. I vaguely remember my Grandmother explaining to me that after the Angelus has rung, the angels are not out there in the wide world protecting us. Or maybe it was in some kind of pious book, in the catholic lands were I was born. …
The starting point is nowadays world, the general direction is that of a fantasy world, set in the past. Why the past? Because it's still present. Why fantasy? Because we were children and things didn't need to make sense, they just were and we had the flexibility to integrate them. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 94. …
" Dreams or vision quests: among Iroquoian-speaking peoples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was considered extremely important literally to realize one's dreams. … "
" 'There is a way that we may attempt,' said Gandalf. 'I thought from the beginning, when first I considered this journey, that we should try it. But it is not a pleasant way, and I have not spoken of it to the Company before. Aragorn was against it, until the pass over the moutains had at least been tried.' … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 93. …
At first AI came for the DM. It was convenient for him to generate ambiance images and places. …
The 5th edition Monster Manual says: …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 92. …
I mastered a one-shot for a friend this week-end. We rolled two characters, he first went for a spellcaster and then rolled a fighter as a sidekick. Decimus is a lombard caster born in a noble family, while Long is a briton whose parents were artisans. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 91. …
"Gamification" was somehow trendy a few years back. Use gamification to make work feel like a sum of small achievements, use gamification to make success measurable and commendable, use gamification to leverage competition among workers eyeing each other's gauge levels. …
I could have titled this post "Vaesen Meadow", it's close phonetically and thematically. It's not about the Eisenstein movie , it's about the Turgenev Sportman's Sketch . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 90. …
I own lots of books. When I'll die they'll be sold, dispersed. …
Spellcasters in Rêve de Dragon are called "High-Dreamers", they go into a transe-like half-dream and crawl through the intermediate dreamlands until they reach an hex appropriate to cast their spell. This post highlights the main parts of this magical system. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 89. …
" In the case of the original freeform concept to which D&D attached itself to as a template: this remained pure and unfettered, pre-1974-1977. It was its redaction (...) in 1978 by way of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule-set that started the contraction of the open form conceptual ranges inherent to it. Over the intervening years, 1978-present, and especially starting with the 3rd edition of the game, the remains of the open form concept all but disappeared; and so too did Arneson's vision-born philosophy, as originally and successfully promoted through TSR, disappear, rarely to be heard from again. … "
Using the resolution table of an old RPG to qualify roll results in the 3-18 scale. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 88. …
The world is at once new and old. It is the dream of a dragon. The worlds are multiple, they are the dreams of multiple dragons. …
New Big Dragon has released Creature Cache , it's overtitled "Old School Adventures™ Accessory CC2" and subtitled "Over 200 Monsters for Classic Edition Gaming". Hereafter CC2. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 87. …
I had hesitated to get a copy of this book. I had thought that with the Rise of the Dungeon Master , Of Dice and Men , Empire of Imagination and then Playing at the World and especially Game Wizards I was covered. Also, I didn't want to go through a fifth or sixth recounting of the satanic panic. …
I am preparing a one shot, I have a vague idea. I decided to prepare a map for the players. Well, it's more a model than a map. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 86. …
Gespenst Wald , forest of the ghost, at least that's what my parser keeps telling me, grieving the "st" in between. …
Back in the days, when I moved from First Legends to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I liked the directness of rolling 3d6 (we probably rolled best 3 of 4d6 then), but going from a system of additions flowing gracefully into a skill system, to a serie of six tables with each its own logic, it felt off. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 85. …
I had this view of the original city in my head for a long time, but I couldn't find it back. I had first glimpsed at it in a history book in primary school and it was just a souvenir. I was happy I could locate it again. Let me give some context for it. It makes for a nice medieval setting. …
This is a session one. All the player characters are daughters or sons of farmers, except for one of them, who comes from the "castle", which is rather a fortified house. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 84. …
" Imagine a hard suit like an oversize suit of armor, three times the size of its pilot, but with smooth, organic components. … "
" All of a sudden and without any warning the door of the hut swung wide open and the steam of the heated room rolled out in a great cloud, out of which seemed to rise like a genie, as the steam settled, the figure of a tall, gaunt peasant impressively crowned with the high Astrakhan cap and wrapped in the great sheepskin overcoat that added to the massiveness of his figure. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 83. …
In our previous session , we had freed the soul of a woman in some kind of cemetery. After that task, we rested for a night and then took the read leading further away. …
Allow me to loop around two ideas in this post. They are not far one from the other, and circumventing imaginary points is not too energy intensive. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 82. …
I was expecting a larger tome, maybe something like a small bible, as I saw the cover after the kickstarter first delivered. I was late, the kickstarter was closed and the Exalted Funeral shop entry was saying "please wait", then "sold out". I keyed in my email and when stock appeared, I ordered a physical copy. It arrived this week. …
My reading of The Medieval Warhorse goes on. I reached the part about the crusades, the meeting of two horse cultures, and the rules of the Templars and the Hospitallers. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 81. …
No, you will not find here any description, any level progression table, nor special benefit list about this God of Cheese Justiciar . …
A fight is a reveal. The cards kept close to the chest are shown to the adversary. But up until that point, especially during the planning that occurred (hopefully) before the fight, the cards and the hand are not visible. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 80. …
Seed of Worlds surprised me in his Shiny TTRPG Links 74 by pointing at an old post from here, That Goblin Tribe where a goblin group survives and strives by avoiding close combat and only offering ranged and prepared fights. …
We had ended up in a goblin refectory with five doors. We knew what was behind two of them. Which one should we cross next? …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 79. …
Casus Belli, is the main francophone TTRPG magazine. It started in 1980 and its current iteration is the fourth one. I received my copy #40 and here are the things in it that caught my attention. …
We had just met Fred and Bubbles and their pet mouse or rat Squeak. Bubbles promised to reveal a secret to us in exchange for 10 toenails, for more toenails he proposed his help in combat. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 78. …
I was looking for a copy of Björn Landström's book The Ship and I came across an edition of The Kalevala that he illustrated. …
The second session of Highball and Dragons had left us in front of a gate, with a new ally, a giant made of rocks, that gave us two small stones, instructing us to strike them together to call him. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 77. …
We just had our third session of "Highball and Dragons". I won't write a report before next week (tomorrow is eow ). …
(an exercise in world building) …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 76. …
The town at the center of the county where I come from is built in a fold of a river. The river is also a frontier, to the west, romance people, to the east, the tide of alemannic tribes. …
I am in the middle of reading The Medieval Warhorse by Ann Hyland. It is a pleasant read. She is a historian that takes us on a ride in a world were cavalry reigns and where remounts and breeds are strategic. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 75. …
This is the second session of our "Highball and Dragons" campaign. Session 1 saw us fleeing our adoptive village being ravaged by orks. …
" Monsters: Should be described, rather than referred to by name. Players will come to recognise different types of monsters by their descriptions and behaviours. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 74. …
If we have a plain set of rules, peppered with traits that provide light exceptions to the rules, where does magic go? …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 73. …
"Gin and Dragons" becomes "Highball and Dragons". For our third campaign, Gary is the referee and he decided to re-use the world of our previous adventures, northwestern Europe in the Viking age. …
I was considering travel rules, the appointment of a quartermaster and of a navigator. An adventuring party is probably made up of young people that overestimates their abilities, else they would rate going on an adventure as suicide and choose less risky paths. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 72. …
Plastic and magnets. I built on the exhaustion gauge I prepared before, adding tokens for hit points, (spell)casting points, ammunition, and food supply. …
" Many kinds of dogs guarded homes, businesses, and even cathedrals, Rawcliffe writes. Large, well-trained “house hunds” were so prized as guards that Scottish law required anyone who killed one of them to stand watch in their place for the next year. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 71. …
"Should we play Warcry or can we play one or two skirmishes with the RPG rules?" …
There is a a story about Surcouf , the french privateer. Having made his fortune he built a luxury house and was planning to have a dining floor "paved" with Napoléons coins. The Emperor was a bit worried, he wanted, ultimately, the very successful privateer to join his Navy, not his jails. He asked: "Do you really plan to step on my face?", Surcouf reassured Napoléon. The dining room was indeed paved with those very valuable coins, but they were placed on their edges, not face up. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 70. …
We're getting ready to play in person again here. Since I am exploring exhaustion levels, I wanted to have a way of tracking those levels. …
"Grind Speed" is what I came up while on the phone with Gary (not Gygax). He wants to lead a campaign using our local B/X and more inspired rules. Inner jubilation — "forever GM" curse might be lifted. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 69. …
I wrote last week about Muses and Oracles , this time, I found the Dark Wood Tarot by Sasha Graham and illustrated by Abigail Larson . …
Three things I like in Knock #3. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 68. …
Elethorn GM has been going through his Legend of Tsukikara (fr) solo play and one of his tools mesmerized me. I did not realize immediately that it was a card and it was simply labelled Muses et Oracles . I initially thought it was a more complex tool but it was a simple stack of cards. …
It is subtitled "Trust in the Gods but Verify" and that reminded me of this friend saying "trusting is good, verifying is better". It's a compilation of articles, chronologically arrayed from the Early Republic to Diocletian. It is a pleasant read and it points to reflections in many directions. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 67. …
For my house rules, I wanted to take inspiration from the 5th Edition exhaustion rules. I want, as a referee, to be able to tell a player that her or his character gets an exhaustion level and to be understood. …
Casus Belli, is the main francophone TTRPG magazine. It started in 1980 and its current iteration is the fourth one. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 66. …
" Charlemagne and his peers were dining. (...) On the other side was Malagis, the cunning dwarf, who, it was said, had power over the unseen creatures of the air, and by means of witchery could sometimes foretell the things that were about to befall. … "
I fell into an ambush, I had just finished The Elusive Shift and the next books calling me were Bullshit Jobs and The Utopia of Rules . I wanted to read something not about games, and Utopia felt lighter, less depressing, than Bullshit , so here I went. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 65. …
I received my copy of Sci Punk Anthology by Runehammer . …
Combat is simple, 1d20 + modifier ≥ opponent AC , on a successful hit, 1dN + modifier taken from the opponent hit points. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 64. …
" There was a man called Orm the Strong, a son of Ketil Asmundson who was a great landsman in the north of Jutland. The folk of Ketil had dwelt in Himmerland as long as men remembered, and were mighty landowners. The wife of Ketil was Asgerd, who was a leman-child of Ragnar Hairybreeks. Thus Orm came of good stock, but as he was the fifth living son of his father there could be no large inheritance for him. … "
You've seen it coming. The smile of the lady of the place is gone. It's been one week since your party's wounded horse got healed. Still, the host is cheerful as ever when it's time for drinks and stories. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 63. …
The two images are taken from a very dark comic named Carbone 6 & Silicium 14 . The image above shows six humans/beings escaping into other worlds. …
The expression "waddling donkeys" was compounded from an article about over-burdened infantrymen, the Taliban seem to have referred to such soldiers as "donkeys" who move in a tactical "waddle". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 62. …
The book in English is entitled Those Terrible Middle Ages , but in the original French, the title is "Pour en finir avec le Moyen Age" which roughly translates to "To End the Middle Ages" or "Let's end with those Middle Ages". …
The comic serie Funérailles is a prequel to Freaks' Squeele , I have just finished its first volume . It's very good, but somehow horrific. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 61. …
This post is a reaction to Alex Schroeder's post Pike Vs. Lance . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 60. …
I was googling for "duel judiciaire en Suisse", wondering if such duels happened in the area now covered by Switzerland. …
The "How to Play" chapter of The Elusive Shift has this passage, which I like very much: …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 59. …
Aachen is the name I gave to my set of house rules. Aachen was the "imperial" city of Charlemagne, so it targets an Europa between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, sparsely populated, with a Church not yet split and plenty of room for paganism (and some magic). …
the simple version …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 58. …
I'm currently on tome 3 of Freaks' Squeele by Florent Maudoux. It is excellent, and it reminded me of one of my bad habits. …
The YouTube algorithm fed me with the Nerd of the Rings episode with Brian Sibley , I read "BBC's The Lord of the Rings (1981)" and I said to myself "What can it be?". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 57. …
Reading the beginning of the Hobbit is a pleasure, how the adventure invites itself into Bilbo's life and shifts it is intriguing. The book Playing at the World by Jon Peterson taught me about the "Visitation Theme" and that is through this lens that I was re-reading The Hobbit. …
The One Ring. The first impression? Symbaroum, since the cover art and the chapter head art is by Martin Grip. The second impression? Trudvang, because a good part of the inner art is by Alvaro Tapia. But these are just impressions. Cover art, inner art, layout and all drew me to Eriador in the years after Bilbo's return. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 56. …
" 'Let us hope that he did not pay too dearly for his boldness,' said Legolas. 'Come! Let us go on! The thought of those merry young folks driven like cattle burns my heart.' " …
The order of march in this subterranean maze is as follow: a fighter goes forward scouting with a spear, he has given his bag to the other fighter behind, walking next to the spellcaster. The dabster of the group closes the progression, the large shield on his back. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 55. …
I like to play the Where the dogs go scenario for Gallant & Bold as an initiation scenario. This scenario has (spoiler) a bunch of skeletons involved. …
Each time a player character sends out a non-player character on an errand, the referee should carefully take note of what is asked, and determine how it is interpreted and applied. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 54. …
Accuracy , Avoidance , Mitigation , and Endurance are the four terms that Jon Peterson chose to categorize the combat systems in Playing at the World (yes, it's not the first time I write about this book ). …
Let's abbreviate "Quick Random" to QR, we get QR table. Back in July, I saw this QR Codes - Random (OSE) Monster Table on Goblin's Henchman, it was subtitled "another oddball idea for you...". I loved this idea. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 53. …
I found a cheap copy of 1992 TSR's HR2 Charlemagne's Paladins . The historical reference is a better appellation than campaign sourcebook , there is one scenario included, but the campaign heavy lifting is left to the dungeonmaster. …
I'm at page 275 of Playing at the World . A paragraph and the note attached to it caught my attention. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 52. …
" I'm dreaming of a White Dragon … "
I am not done with Playing at the World , far from it, in fact I am still in its initial chapters, specifically the one that details the why to the setting to Chainmail and then Dungeons & Dragons. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 51. …
I noticed a pattern in some actual plays. I mostly look (listen) to francophone actual plays, maybe the pattern is not present in english or other language actual plays. …
I've just finished reading Game Wizards by Jon Peterson , it was quite interesting and it plays nicely with The Rise of the Dungeon Master , Empire of Imagination , and Of Dice and Men . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 50. …
I have tried to lure my daughters away from Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Youtube with a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. …
I am listening to Iko's Lost Bay podcast, the episode about Paolo Greco and his Book of Gaub . I warmly recommend this episode. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 49. …
Ford's Faeries describes itself as …
There was a package waiting for me from Olivier Sanfilippo . He had asked me if I had the Yami Monogatari screen . I said no, I have the Yami Monogatari book (and all the other Empire des Cerisiers books), but nothing more. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 48. …
I've just received my paper copy of Casus Belli 38. I already wrote about it in Narration Principal when the PDF version was made available. …
I wrote about a technique for sliced random generation in Exquisite Corpse . Here is an example run. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 47. …
I already wrote about "Jouer avec l'Histoire". It contains an article by Renaud Maroy, the author of Pavillon Noir , a TTRPG about Pirates and Corsaires. …
I have spent some time last week translating random tables for generating locations. Translated it all. I feel primed now, I feel in the mood set by the tables (although slighly skewed by the translation). …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 46. …
Japan is fascinating, it's being reinterpreted in many role-playing games. L'Empire du Soleil Défunt is one of these iterations, it comes in a small book of 44 pages, settings and rules. It's in French, but let me present it anyway. …
I had this conversation with one of my uncles. I was telling him I was looking for a Burgundy wine. I had seen that woman and tasted her lips and then lost her, and lost myself looking for her. Burgundy lips. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 45. …
While in the old country, friends invited me to accompany them foraging for mushrooms. It was a delightful hunt, it forced me to slow down, to scan the soilscape carefully. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 44. …
I found my three books, the french edition with the Jeff Easley covers. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 43. …
Another find in the attic, the cards say 1994. I vaguely remember that I bought them in the period after Interview with a Vampire . …
My old Corto Maltese comics are full of wonders that I had forgotten. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 42. …
I ran a session with two young kids, 6 and 8 years old and their mother. I used the scenario from Gallant & Bold adventures named "Là où vont les Chiens" (Where the Dogs go). I had my travel kit with me and the kids were wondering what it was about. …
In the old country, I retrieved a history book I had found enlightening when reading it around the turn of the century. It's Patricians, Cheesemakers, Mercenaries . …
Here is another piece of translation from Jouer avec l'Histoire . I did translate the introduction of this book in Face Mask . Let me translate a few paragraphs from the first chapter that I find interesting. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 41. …
This is an article written in 2013 and revised in 2018 by the french TTRPG Editor Lapin Marteau. It's available in the original French at Système 0 et Système fantôme and this translation is also available there at System Zero and Shadow System . …
The posts Oh, Injury! by Sandra and What are Hit Points? by Grumpy Wizard put me in a "lingering injury" mood. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 40. …
"Jehan, I have an idea, I want to run the next campaign" …
This is not an everyday carry post. It looks a bit like it, but it's more a travelday carry post. TDC? …
Casus Belli #38 is available in PDF. I will not make a review/recap until I'll have received it in print. It sports a beautiful cover by Joann Sfar taken from his "Monstres" RPG. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 39. …
Intrépides is the transposition of Gallant & Bold to a SF setting. Could that be John Grümph's Stars Without Number? Could that qualify John Grümph as the french Kevin Crawford? Why not, both are proposing a core inspired by the Great Ancient, and both are proposing random tables to quickly flesh out locations, factions, NPCs, etc. …
" Now the story told in the secret writings about these things, that we humans are in a kind of prison and one must not release oneself or run away from it, seems to me an important one and is not easy to understand. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 38. …
It's an epicurean setting where the gods exist, but are too far away, too perfect and happy in their eternal rejoicing that they never noticed the inhabitants of that world of hardship. …
Here is a set of rules for setting up a camp and resting. They were initially part of the free extension to Gallant & Bold named "Sur la Route" (On the Road). Gallant & Bold is a "Vieille École" medieval fantasy game that I reviewed a few months ago. …
" « La Male Mort », the sudden death that terrifies the fifteenth century French, because it does not grant the necessary time to prepare to appear before one's Creator, is associated with the man of war. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 37. …
This is a translation of Comment devenir un Mentat (originally published 2013-05-06) by retired Colonel Michel Goya . I am grateful for his kind authorization to translate and publish here. …
" Even the most realistic and immersive re-enactment lacks the stark-naked terror of a violent death that dominates many of the more candid accounts of modern combat. This means individuals on a simulated battlefield are a less fearful than real life. Despite this, the side that is losing normally is forced backwards and when a unit disintegrates due to casualties, the survivors often run to the edge of the battlefield in order to 'survive'. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 36. …
The Grimgar manga is interesting. I finished reading it and I've started watching the Anime, I have not read the light novel it's based on. …
In March this year, I had an email exchange with a friend, she explained to me that she had noticed her kids were getting restless and nervous when getting back in the house, even after long walks in the woods. …
The Monstrous Bestiary is a 2008 list of eighty-two monsters for the dK system created in 2006 by Eric Nieudan and John Grümph . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 35. …
The usual ttrpg medieval fantasy world warps chronologically where land meets sea. The characters start on land in something resembling Ivanhoe and in the port, they're greeted by ships out of Pirates of the Caribbeans . …
In the first months of the plague, I had look at Dwarf Fortress . The world generation phase was intriguing. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . TTRPG Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 34. …
" But by 1505, the king [Manuel of Portugal], supported by an inner circle of ideologues and advisers, was sure that it was his destiny to pursue the India project. What was wrapped in the proclamation of 27 February was an entirely new strategy, a bold long-term plan resting on ambitions of breathtaking scale: to establish a permanent empire in India backed up by military force and to gain control of all the trade of the Indian Ocean. … "
"Sur les chemins de l'Empire" is a supplement to L'Empire des Cerisiers , the Japan-inspired french TTRPG. …
I've just received a copy of Avant Charlemagne , a 1986 french role-playing game set in Western Europe right before Charlemagne. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 33. …
I remember being told something along the line of "in our group, we track monster hit points in the open, so that the gamemaster cannot cheat". …
I am still reeling from reading Jean-Philippe Jaworski "Même pas Mort" and "Chasse Royale" . It is excellent and I am looking forward to read the rest of the story. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 31. …
This is a translation of Jeux de guerre et victoire dans le Pacifique (July 2021) by retired Colonel Michel Goya . I am grateful for his kind authorization to translate and publish here. …
" Plans are worthless, but planning is everything … "
" About the passage of the Gauls into Italy we have received the following account. Whilst Tarquinius Priscus was king of Rome, the supreme power amongst the Celts, who formed a third part of the whole of Gaul, was in the hands of the Bituriges; they used to furnish the king for the whole Celtic race. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 31. …
I was investigating a lizard and I found a snake. There was a crab in between. …
Ogres, not a maiden. Ogres de Gel is an adventure in eight acts for the OSR game Gallant & Bold (which I reviewed here ). …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 30. …
I am translating here a piece of the introduction by Olivier Caïra to Jouer avec l'Histoire . The anecdote here sends me on multiple reflection paths. …
Cuervo Moera, could be misread as "Curve Death". That's a useful name when one belongs to the Guild of the Whisperers, that coordinates the assassins of Ciudalia, the rich city by the sea struggling to reaffirm its independence from the King. …
In the previous session ( Gin and Dragons #2 ), the adventuring party confronted some cold spraying creature emerging from the sea, they started making plans to capture it... …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 29. …
I am looking at ways to integrate money in my current campaign a mix of Wolves of God and other TTRPGS between Britain, Norway and the north of the Carolingian empire. …
I read somewhere that giving the advantage on a d20 was similar to giving a +5. I ran the numbers, thanks to AnyDice and here are the results, arranged in a table: …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 28. …
" The lost bay is a fictional place but it's also the place where I grew up, or at least it is very much inspired by it. I call it "lost" because I was involuntarily and abruptly severed from it as I was just getting out of my teenage years. We were in 1993. I had to pack my stuff in less than 48 hours. My whole family left and I followed. We moved abroad. I waited 15 years before I could go back to the bay. I had become an adult then, and it was work that took me back to my homeworld. … "
Let me translate the opening section of Trip to Skye , a recent french game by Romaric Briand, the main proponent behind the ttrpg podcast La Cellule . …
My intention was to write about Coureurs d'Orages , the game by Islayre d'Argolh , but since it claims its filiation to Searchers of the Unknown , I'll look at the ancestor first. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 27. …
This is a map I made but did not use. Let me discard it here. …
" From earlier conversations on our journey, I knew that Gaven believed magic comes from nothing, that all a Guildsman needs is knowledge and skill to create miracles. I saw no reason to disillusion him then. But in truth, all magic requires fuel. Aelvan magic is fed by wind, rain, sun, and soil; dragon magic, by fire; the magic of the fey, if they ever existed, by light and sound. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 26. …
" A brave hero is sometimes faced by a chance of dire misfortune. He may … "
Less than seven days after receiving my copy of Casus Belli 36 , my copy of Casus Belli 37 showed up in my mail box. It was thinly wrapped but survived all the miles. Maybe thanks to the Alien on the cover. …
It's hard to play a higher INT character, and probably as hard playing a higher WIS one. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 25. …
I just received my physical copy of Casus Belli #36. It's actually the second physical copy of it that was fired towards me. The first copy didn't seem to be arriving so I sent an email to Casus services and Eric there was very friendly and sent me a second copy, "Yes, such things happen, especially since you live outside of France. We'll send you another copy". …
Someone in a Discord channel was pontificating, "Kings are high level characters". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 24. …
" Heroes do get old. Some characters are also relatively aged when their adventurer career starts (for example, wizards). Here are a few optional rules for age to affect characters: … "
I am currently reading Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001-2012 . It's an expensive book, I think I got lucky and got a very good second-hand copy. …
Here is a thought dump at the intersection of two blog posts I read this week, Bosch and Tarot. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 23. …
I saw a fragmented conversation passing me by on Mastodon the other day. It was about "bad DMs". Okay, I get it, it feels good to vent about bad DMs, but at some point I realized that the table had turned since I had started gaming and that the Dungeon and its Dragons might be a place where players consumed entertainement and ranked the middlemen. …
" Novice heroes begin with no coinage. Shillings are usually mere units of account, and actual coins are more trophies and art objects than currency. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 22. …
My latest podcast addiction is La Cellule , it's a gathering of french RPG authors and theoricians and it's a weekly delight. They have a various formats for their podcast episodes and one of them is the "one shot", where a game is tested over a day and debriefed the following day. A few years back they tried Dungeons & Dragons in its fourth edition and they actually had a great time. …
In End of Week Links 20 I linked to Vaesen: Deep Dive and there, there is a link to Nordiska Väsen by Johan Egerkrans. I couldn't resist. …
The combat resolution system in First Legends is interesting (at least to me). It is a 1986 French system that came as a simplification of a 1983 system named Legends . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 21. …
First Legends , its character creation, skill and combat system. …
Our national television aired Excalibur one Monday night in the 1980s. I was in primary school, I can still remember my classmates commenting it the next day. I could probably not watch it on that night, but it was safely taped on VHS for my later enjoyment. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 20. …
This is a game from John Grümph, the prolific french author. He released it in French as Coeurs Vaillants and in English Gallant & Bold . The illustration above is from John Grümph, his imagination and his taste are well served by his hand, in writing and in drawing. …
It should be simple. Three set of dice in a box, a lid that can be placed under the box or used as a dice tray. …
" Inside the blackness, the mound visitors stoop blindly down the low, narrow passageway. The howling wind outside is muffled, then silenced. Finally, they findthat they can straighten up in the darkness. Torches are lit, revealing the high, dry, stone-lined chamber that lies in the middle of the mound. Warm fires are kindled. Booze and food emerge from travelling-bags. As the group settles down to wait out the storm, the dusty heat and fierce sunlight of Jerusalem seem vague and far away: an abstract unreality. … "
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 19. …
This is a translation of Ensemble tout devient plus lent (September 2012) by retired Colonel Michel Goya . I am grateful for his kind authorization to translate and publish here. …
I cannot remember in which book it was, the reasoning was that the christian relegion was successful in sixteenth century Japan because it promised the paradise after a single life of suffering, unlike the reincarnation grind promised by Buddhism. Die, respawn, die. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 18. …
The blog post My Earliest Comic Issues got me thinking about the bandes dessinées that were part of my childhood. …
At the beginning of the month, I wrote about the Jaculus , and had devised stats for it to include in my setting, the next step was to make a miniature for it. …
In the previous session ( Gin and Dragons #1 ), the adventuring party was escaping slavers, through tunnels they arrived in the lair of a troll on an island. They tried to steal the boat of the creature, but that failed. After a small fight and some parley, the troll accepted to ferry them to the next island north. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 17. …
The battlemat was on the table, I was holding a black dry-erase marker and my daughters each had a miniature. "There is an entrance to a cave..." …
The next game session will host one more experiment, 3d printed hex maps. The picture above isn't about the Giant's Causeway , it's an island off Norway . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 16. …
This week's Marble Madness made me want to explore more marble powered game helpers. …
This is a translation of L'art de la guerre dans Dune (May 2013) by retired Colonel Michel Goya . He authorized me to translate and publish this article. Translation is treason... But I'm no Doctor Yueh. …
One month ago, I was sawing one dollar plastic abacuses in three and getting ready to track damage for the creatures I opposed to my players. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 15. …
" The library defends itself, immeasurable as the truth it houses, deceitful as the falsehood it preserves … "
"Beers and Dragons" becomes "Gin and Dragons". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 14. …
" It was carpeted with dragons. Because they were asleep, he stretched out his spearshaft towards a particular gold ring, and pulled it towards himself. At once, one of the little dragons woke up and stirred the others close to him, until the jaculus was awake. … "
The algorithm fed me the "Making of The Name of the Rose" where Jean-Jacques Annaud, the director, describes various episodes, especially the ones around casting. …
As a kid, I had this comic book about my country during the roman times. The image on the right was on its back cover, a celtic warrior from the Helvetii tribe. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 13. …
Among its common combat actions , Worlds without Number has "Shatter a Shield" and it reads: …
I came up with the title "Ryuu Ex Machina" while reading the "Referee Guide". I read "follow the rules" and "use the dragon-person to smooth out your errors" and thought "Ryuu Ex Machina". …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 12. …
Turn-based wargames are deceptive. The military commander doesn't move each of the pawns in his troop, he gives orders. The subordinates execute the orders, not the commander. …
I did a review of L'Empire des Cerisiers and Olivier Sanfilippo . Olivier wanted to answer some of the points in it. We convened on a Q&A format and here is the result. …
The session 4 ended with the party dragging their prisoner down to the beach. The youngsters had posted a watch, but the majority of them had drunk heavily the previous night and were still asleep. Everybody had to wake up and hastily depart the cave and beach. They had wind in their back, but nobody thought about putting up the mast and the sail. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 11. …
The two words "Free Kriegsspiel" seems to come up more and more in my blog feed. I can't help telling myself "Freies Kriegsspiel". There is a nice article and thread about it at BoardGameGeek: …
The King is on his throne, surrounded by his retinue. Attackers appears from all four corners. It's the defenders' duty to safeguard the King's escape. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 10. …
I went to the one dollar shop and got two japanese abacuses for 2 dollars each. Once I got back home, I saw them 4 - 5 - 4. See picture above. …
The Osprey books are great for iconography, you can show your players the plate to give them a feel for the period you're aiming to play. …
I have enhanced the histrion NPC generator I use for Wolves of Gods . …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 9. …
The book totals 320 pages, the first 200 pages are for the setting. The rules go for 60 pages, there are 23 pages for game masters, and a 20 pages scenario. …
Another session, another experimentation. …
The session 3 (fourth session actually) ended with Ravenscar's leader Runesieg asking our adventuring party to kidnap one of his old friends who left the community and emigrated south. Their reward, in case of success, would be passage to Frisia. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 8. …
Yesterday's marked the 91st anniversary of the birth of J. Eric Holmes in 1930. …
It is probably the first thing I noticed when I watched this documentary about role playing games on a french channel with my dad, around 1985. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 7. …
I am tinkering a magic system for my table, my own magic system train wreck. …
Héros et Dragons is a french adaptation of the 5th edition SRD. If I understood correctly its story, it was (kick)started because the Wizards said something like "We will not translate 5th edition to French". Black Book Editions jumped on the occasion and created Heroes and Dragons. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 6. …
This is Enwald, a dane warrior: …
There is a black swan on the cover, let's hope our RPG practice is antifragile, our crashes making it sturdier. …
The session 2 (third session actually) was crowned by Oswald, Gerald, and Anders meeting the Child King at his court. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 5. …
" As a young man, I desired to learn armed fighting, including the art of fighting in the lists with spear, poleaxe, sword, dagger and unarmed grappling, on foot and on horseback, armored and unarmored. In addition, I wanted to study how weapons were made, and the characteristics of each weapon for both offense and defense, particularly as they applied to mortal combat. … "
The Corona front is quieting down a bit here. On Friday evening our campaign Beers and Dragons starts again. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 4. …
Geoffroy Hassoun and Samia Aci-Sèche are the authors of the RPG Les Oubliés . I had the opportunity to ask Geoffroy a few questions, here are his answers. …
I am building this archelaus tool to generate hex maps I use as gamemaster in my session preparation. I've just generated a map of Lindisfarne and its surroundings. …
Dungeon World is a game powered by the Apocalypse. There is a direct gate to its engine room. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 3. …
I was considering the SRD creatures I had turned from Markdown to HTML in laconi.co , and then I was looking at the Wolves of God post I had written. …
There are 20 skills and 6 attributes (the usual 3d6 STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA), so that makes 120 possible skill checks. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 2. …
Each time the excellent Professor Dungeonmaster says Grognard it hurts. Grognard is a french term lifted by wargamers. It means the Grumblers . …
I combined the excellent Umbiology rework of the SRD document to Markdown with the Edward Tufte CSS and came up with laconi.co . …
My Father's mother tongue is Patois, my Mother's mother tongue was French, but her "grand-mother tongue" was Patois, she was spending a good deal of time with her grand-parents who spoke Patois to her. …
"Eow" for End Of Week . Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 1, I plan to post in this way once a week on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. …
The player: "I am a sprite and the guard is a sprite as well, I try to seduce him!" …
Hundred meters wide hexagons with elevation, wood cover, rivers, ponds and lakes. This is starting to get nice. …
It is the first RPG that I bought. If I remember correctly it cost me twenty Swiss Francs, it was 1986. A friend from medium school sold it to me, the illustrations were awesome and the box was in excellent condition. …
In the world of Hârn, orcs and gobelins are called "Garguns". They were created or brought to Hârn by a renegade mage named Lothrim. They survived the demise of their initial master, and since the dwarfs didn't press on and retired to Azadmere, it left space for the Garguns to proliferate. …
"N.YX Fantasy Urbaine" is a french diceless roleplaying game by John Grümph , a prolific author and illustrator . He creates original games and also translates and illustrates english works to French, for instance, his version of HârnWorld is beautiful. …
I am writing this tool named Archelaus to draw hexmaps with elevation. It's work in progress. I am experimenting with ways to render the contour, the screenshot above shows at what stage I am as I am typing those lines. …
The excellent 2019-03-20 Adventuring Party episode points at Wikipedia's list of Mythological Objects . It's a font of inspiration. …
Ravenfeast is a set of skirmish rules for the Viking Age. It is freely available as a 44 pages PDF booklet. The rules themselves only span 6 pages, the rest covers the historical context, wargaming as a hobby, miniature painting and terrain crafting. …
Our campaign is taking place in Dark Ages England. I can fire up Google Maps and have a look at the locations and imagine what they were twelve centuries ago. The woods were perhaps larger, lowlands may have been swamps, that place name hints at what used to be here... …
" They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I think, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our natures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall unite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among blue hills … "
I, as a game master, subverted a writing technique to prepare role-playing game sessions. …
Despite being titled Joan of Arc , this RPG is written in French, and yes, it's set in Western Europe in the fifteenth century. It comes after the Time of Legends: Joan of Arc board game. This RPG game can be used on its own or as a 5e setting. It deserves a careful look. …
At the end of session 1 our three player characters, Oswald, Gerald, and Anders had a quick fight with a band of Norwegians. They just had recovered the young sister from the goblins (those fled has the Norwegians intervened). …
I don't like being served "factions" in settings books. …
The Weaver is a spellcaster class we are experimenting with in your beers and dragons campaign. …
It was in 1987. I had introduced a friend to roleplaying games and in turn, he became a game master. In fact that was an excellent thing in our group, everybody chose a different game and mastered it for the others. …
We play on top of a hex/square battlemat and I was/am looking for a way to measure ranges. …
Goblins in the north say they've seen three or four human migrations. The men that came on the island on rowing boats, they dislike the most, because they worship in forests, forests where the goblins used to live. …
In the eighties, I cannot remember AD&D having an official character sheet (or it never reached us). Other games came with a page to photocopy (bad for the booklet). …
La Grand Aventure du Jeu de Rôle is a book by Julien Pirou about, well, the great adventure of the role playing game. …
On Sunday morning, I went to see the Kimetsu no Yaiba movie with the girls. It was nice. …
"High Fantasy" or "Costco Fantasy"? Books after books of plenty? Cornucopia of feats, monsters, subclasses and optimizations? …
" You, the Gamemaster of this game, this is your Neverland. This is your world to shape and create. Your sandbox to play in. Your board upon which the pieces move. (...) It's time to tell your own tales of Pirates and Mermaids and children who fly. " …
Oswald is the rogue in our Beers and Dragons . He is equipped with a short bow and a dagger, possibly a Seax . …
Oswald, a rogue, and Gerald an axe-wielder, both saxons of around eighteen of age are pursuing a band of small sized humanoids that kidnapped the little sister of Gerald's girlfriend. They have with them Rudgard an old, fourty-something, fighter. They found a hidden cave where the goblins seem to have stopped briefly, the fire pit hasn't been used recently. The left side of the cave seems to be used as a jail. There is nothing of value left, only rags that they use to make some kind of torch, outside the night is falling. …
I'll get to add a blog roll to this blog, but for now, let's point at stuff from a simple post. …
Sometimes around AD 890 in the lands north of Jorvik, two saxon teenagers, Oswald, a jack of all trades, and Gerald, strong with an axe, were having a good time with their girlfriends. It would have been a most fine time, if one of the girl's little sister weren't throwing stones at the couples and sermoning them about not getting lured by the two boys. …